Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 05.djvu/156

LEFT IMPEACHMENT 128 IMFEBIAL shall be removed from office on impeach- ment for and conviction of treason, brib- ery, or other high crimes or misde- meanors. The Blount case was the first. Wil- liam Blount, United States Senator from Tennessee, was charged in 1797 with conspiring with British officers to steal part of Louisiana from Spain for Eng- land's benefit. The House prepared articles of impeachment. The Senate expelled him, after putting him under bonds for trial. Judge John Pickering, of the Federal District Court for New Hampshire, was impeached in 1803 for drunkenness and profanity on the bench. The defense was insanity. On trial before the Sen- ate, Pickering was convicted by a party vote, and removed from his office. In 1804, Samuel Chase of Maryland, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was charged with improper conduct on the bench. The impeachment proceedings, instigated and managed by John Ran- dolph of Virginia, were political in their origin and animus. Judge Chase was acquitted through the failure of the pros- ecution to obtain a two-thirds vote against him in the Senate, on any one of the eight articles of impeachment. He resumed his seat on the beach, and held it as long as he lived. About a quarter of a century later, James H. Peck, a Federal district judge in Missouri, was impeached for oppres- sive treatment of an attorney. The case was of no importance; the judge was acquitted. Thirty years afterward, at the begin- ning of the Civil War, Judge West H. Humphreys of the Federal District Court of Tennessee, joined the Confederacy and accepted judicial office under it, with- out taking the trouble to send his resigna- tion to Washington. He was impeached, mainly in order to vacate the office, and convicted on June 26, 1862. Andrew Johnson was Impeached on March 4, 1868, the 11 articles charging the President in various forms with violation of the Tenure of Office act, with violation of the Constitution, with conspiracy to prevent the execution of the Tenure of Office act, etc. No vote was taken except on the three strongest articles and impeachment failed by a single vote. The seventh Federal impeachment was that of William W. Belknap, Grant's Secretary of War. He was justly charged in 1876 with corruption in office, and the House voted unanimously to im- peach him. He resigned hastily a few hours before the passage of the im- peachment resolution. The eighth im- peachment was that of Charles Swayne, Judge of the U. S. District Court in Florida. He was impeached for miscon- duct in office and was tried from Feb. 6 to Feb. 27, 1905. Both impeachment proceedings failed by the lack of a two- thirds majority in the Senate for con- viction. In 1913 William Sulzer, Governor of New York, was impeached for filing a false statement of receipts and expendi- tures during his campaign. He was found guilty of filing a false statement but exonerated from the charge of per- jury, and removed from office. Political animosity brought about the trial. In the same year Robert W. Archbald, United States Circuit Judge of Penn- sylvania, was impeached and found guilty of using his office for his personal profit. IMPENETRABILITY, one of the es- sential properties of matter, implies that no two bodies can at the same time oc- cupy the same space. If a nail be driven into a piece of wood, it does not, prop- erly speaking, penetrate the wood, for the fibers are driven aside before the nail can enter. If a vessel be filled with fluid, and a solid body be then placed in it, as much water will run over as is equal in bulk to the solid body, in this way making room for it. IMPERATOR (im-per-a'tor), a title originally bestowed upon a victorious leader on the field of battle by his sol- diers; toward the end of the common- wealth it was conferred by the Senate. Augustus and his successors constantly assumed this title, and it became the peculiar appellation of supreme power. Still later it became equivalent to the modern emperor. In zoology, a genus of gasteropodous mollusks, family Turhin- idae. About 20 species are known from South Africa, India, Australia, and New Zealand. IMPERATORIN (im-per-a-tor'in), C12H12O8, peucedanin, a neutral substance destitute of taste and smell, obtained from the root of the masterwort by digesting it in boiling alcohol and puri- fying, by means of ether, from a brown resinous body with which it is contami- nated. IMPERIAL, pertaining to an emperor or empire; thus, an imperial crown is such as is worn by the German emperor; the Imperial Parliament is that of the United Kingdom. A size of paper, measuring 30 inches by 22, is also called imperial.